D1 to be discontinued on December 31, 2012

[Don]

On 14.12.2011 05:37, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 12/13/11 10:12 PM, Don wrote:
>> On 13.12.2011 17:00, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> On 12/13/11 7:52 AM, Don wrote:
>>>> On 10.12.2011 22:19, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>> In order to increase focus and unity in the language, we are
>>>>> discontinuing support for D1 on December 31, 2012. That's more than
>>>>> one
>>>>> year away, which gives enough time to D1 users to migrate libraries
>>>>> and
>>>>> applications to D2.
>>>>
>>>> I thought we had moved away from these kinds of unilateral decisions.
>>>> I strongly oppose this decision. In particlar, I find the lack of
>>>> community consulatation deplorable.
>>>
>>> Apologies for this being so sudden. This was deliberate as there would
>>> have been no way to achieve consensus in the matter. People prefer
>>> having choices and postponement options, and are generous with others'
>>> time.
>>>
>>> Allow me to recap the reasons why I think this is a necessary move.
>>>
>>> 1. We can't serve two masters. Working on two languages at the same time
>>> was non-committal and artificially sustained a rift in the community.
>>
>> The rift was created and sustained by unilateral statements like this
>> one. Abandoning half the community doesn't help.
>
> There is no abandonment. Also, where is that 50/50 estimate from? Just
> curious.


The D2 community is definitely bigger than the D1 community. But how 
much more?

It's hard to be sure, but the Tango users used to be 75% of the 
community, based on a few polls that were held, but they never had much 
representation on the ng. I guess between half and 2/3 are gone now.
I don't think the entire D community is as big as it was back then 
(based on number of public repositories).
Additionally, the number of contributors, and level of activity, in 
Tango, was higher than Phobos has ever had.

>>> It also diffused our focus, delayed us to an ever-increasing extent,
>>
>> What on earth gives you that idea? The only resources involved are some
>> fraction of Walter's time, which is obviously an important resource, but
>> nobody other than Walter is affected.
>
> Walter told me so, and Walter is the single most important bottleneck.

So "us" means Walter?

>> You're seriously misrepresenting
>> the situation.
>
> What is an accurate representation of the situation, and what evidence
> is there to back that up?

This is an issue of Walter's time, and nothing more. I think the 
evidence for that is clear -- who else is spending time on D1?

Important thing to notice: GDC and LDC also have D1 compilers. Does this 
decision apply to them?

>> I spend some time on fixing D1 bugs, but that won't change, see below.
>>
>>> and
>>> sent the wrong message out that we're lacking confidence of what our
>>> core thrust is, so we're trying to sort of please everyone. ("Here's our
>>> flagship language! If you don't like it, well, we have another one.")
>>
>> This is a silly and offensive statement. Most languages are in this
>> situation. Look at Python2 vs Python3, Perl6 vs Perl5.
>
> I wonder who would be offended by that.

Other than me? Well, I think the Python guys would be offended if you 
said it of them.

>>> 2. The deadline is more than a year away. This is a long time, enough
>>> for us to make D2 compelling, and also for interested people to migrate.
>>
>> No, it's an exceedingly short timeframe.
>
> Other vendors give similar time scale for much larger migrations.

Only when the migration is to a mature product.

>
>> What gives you the idea that
>> nobody is using D1?
>
> There is not one sentence in my message claiming nobody is using D1.

Ok, I can't make sense of it otherwise.

> Don, it is you who is misrepresenting the situation, and repeatedly. I
> understand you find this frustrating, but please, let's have a
> constructive dialog.
>
>> Have you thought about what would convince them to
>> switch to D2, and what would be required for them to do it?
>
> I think the most important aspect for them would be completion of
> Tango's port to D2. The recent progress in the matter is encouraging. If
> the D1 community is sizable, resourceful, and interested, I believe that
> to be within the realm of possibility.

At the present time, do they actually desire to move to D2? If not, why 
not? And the big one: are they confident that D2 is sufficiently stable?

>> I suspect you don't know much about the D1 community. (Note that only a
>> small fraction of D users have ever used the newsgroup, and it's mostly
>> people with an interest in language design. They are not representative).
>>
>> I can already say with certainty that I will still be using D1 in 2013.
>
> That's great. The decision does not make it impossible or even
> particularly difficult for D1 users to continue using D1. Since there
> were near zero bug reports on D1,

There are 400 open bugzilla D1 + common D1/D2 compiler bugs in Bugzilla, 
including nearly all of the heavily voted bugs. D1 is very much more 
stable than D2 (D2 has 800 open bugs), so there are far fewer bug reports.

If you mean, there were no bug reports on the beta, that's not 
suprising, there are no D1 Phobos changes, which is where regressions 
mostly show up.

  they can be assumed to be content with
> the quality of the compiler. Really I don't see the gist of the
> complaint. This is not abandonment.

You, Andrei, are personally making a decision which affects the entire 
community. I'm actually a bit shocked that you've done this.

Especially since there was a big public discussion on the D internals 
newsgroup (Nov 10) about reducing the pressure of Walter's time.
---------
Kenji:
 >      Today only Walter improvements D1 branch. Almost dmd pulls only
 >    consider D2 branch. Should we add D1 patch at the same time?

Walter:
Merging with D1 hasn't been too difficult; I use a program called "meld" 
which makes it a snap.
...

It usually takes a couple hours to merge a patch, if things go smoothly. 
Most of that is running the test suite. Some more time is spent updating 
the changelog and bugzilla.
----
So, didn't sound then as though D1 was a big issue. Yet a month later 
you announce you've made a private decision about axing D1.
Feels exactly like a military coup.